


Oh, How We've Grown

by theclaravoyant



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: 4x15 spoilers, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2017-03-10
Packaged: 2018-10-01 23:09:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10202921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theclaravoyant/pseuds/theclaravoyant
Summary: “Remember that?” she asks. “Remember how that feels? You’re real. Okay? And Fitz is real too. You wanna come out there with me and I’ll prove it?”-When Jemma has a night terror about the LMDs, Fitz calls Daisy in to help comfort her. (Fluff ensues.)





	

The dream is so real, she can feel it. She can smell it; the fear and the sweat and the blood on her hands. She can hear him, calling to her, begging for his life as she slashes relentlessly into his flesh, trying to find the cut-off. Sparking. Dead.

 _Did you kill him?_  

She jolts awake, her terrified dream-mind having apparently forgotten to breathe as she gasps for air that doesn’t smell like copper. She still feels the sweat, and the tangle of sheets is a trap, is a nightmare, everything is trying to drown her – and he’s there.

“Jemma?”

“Get away from me!” She jumps off the bed, stumbling in the blankets as she backs up against the wall. Her hands and her eyes try to search for something to hold, something to defend herself with. He holds his hands up, palms toward her, he doesn’t pursue.

“It’s alright, I promise,” he assures her. “Jemma, it’s me.”

 _It’s not him._  

 _I couldn’t._  

“Stay back.” Through gritted teeth, she snarls, and slips into the bathroom. It’s then that Fitz lunges, in desperation, and presses himself against the door.

“What’s wrong? Jemma?” His voice is strained with panic. She’s clearly not altogether in the real world right now, but everything he does seems to be panicking her more. Even now he can hear her rifling through the cupboards, probably still searching for something. Is he about to get shivved with his own toothbrush?

Recovering control of himself, of his voice, Fitz assures her;

“I’m backing away from the bathroom door now. If you want to come out, I’ll be sitting on the bed.”

As hard as it is, he forces himself to retreat, and calls Daisy instead. She’s always a good back-up, and especially if this has something to do with his LMD, she might know something he didn’t. At the very least, there would be someone without his face, which seemed to be hurting her. And now he has nothing to do but wait.

-

When Daisy arrives, Jemma is still in the bathroom.

“I think she’s locked herself in,” Fitz explained, trying to resist the urge to chew on his nails. “I’m worried. What if she smashes a mirror or something?”

Daisy shakes her head. “I think she’ll listen to me.”

With a slightly feigned confidence, she raps on the bathroom door.

“Jemma? Hey, it’s Daisy.”

There’s a dim sound of recognition inside.

“You preparing for the robot apocalypse in there? Mind if I join?”

A second or two passes, as if Jemma is tossing up the invitation – or perhaps climbing over some sort of balustrade. But then she opens the door, Fitz’s razor in one hand. She keeps her weapon raised and her dark eyes on Fitz, until Daisy forces her way in.

They sit on the side of the bath, and Daisy takes the razor from her hands.

“Hey, there, trooper,” Daisy croons. “The war’s over, Jemma. No LMDs here anymore, we’re safe.”

“How do you know?” Jemma wonders. “I keep – I keep seeing him. _It._ It’s everywhere.”

“Not out there,” Daisy promises. “That’s the real Fitz. And he’s very confused right now, by all this. You know he’s real, right? That it was just a dream?”

Jemma’s eyes dart towards the door and back.

“I…know it was a dream,” she explains, her silence completing the statement with, _I don’t know that he’s real._ Daisy nods, understanding the implication, and takes Jemma’s hand. She turns it over gently, and quakes it, just a little – just enough to feel the textures of flesh and blood and bone.

“Remember that?” she asks. “Remember how that feels? You’re real. Okay? And Fitz is real too. You wanna come out there with me and I’ll prove it?”

It’s hard to escape the fear, but in her heart Jemma knows that what Daisy is saying is true. She trusts that Fitz is real and she hopes it with all her heart and that is enough to make her nod and stand, and she focuses on Daisy’s determined, enthusiastic expression to drive away the memory of the knife and the blood and the pleading. Each step is fragile, hesitant – she can still remember the violent lurch of her heart and her gut and the way the air disappeared when It had turned around and betrayed her; she can still remember how quickly things can turn. But she trusts. She trusts Daisy, though she waits in the doorway of the bathroom for Daisy to reach out.

Daisy fixes Fitz with a firm stare, that says _trust me, go with me._ She holds a hand out.

“When we were fighting them,” she explains, “this was how we figured out we were real. If I quake you, I can feel it. Just a little bit. Okay?”

He holds his arm out without question, and Daisy wraps her hands around it. She glances back at Jemma and gently starts quaking, feeling all the frequencies that make up Fitz. He flinches at the strange sensation, but holds his ground, and out of the corner of his eye, watches as Jemma creeps into the room, somewhat reassured.

Though slow, she makes a bee-line for Fitz and wraps her arms around him, and presses her face into his chest. She can feel it too then, in her own way; his heart and his lungs, sweat and cotton and soap and the tang of metal, not from his body but from his work.

“I’m so sorry,” she murmurs. “It won’t leave me alone.”

“Well, I won’t either,” Fitz assures her, wrapping his arms around Jemma once Daisy lets him go. “I – the real me – will be right here the whole time. It’s not going to win. Don’t you worry about that.”

Jemma nods, and breathes him in one last time before she steps back, and is released as she does so. She turns to Daisy.

“Thank you. I don’t know what I would have done if…”

Daisy shrugs nonchalantly, but her eyes are sharp and intense in their message. “You’re Jemma Simmons. You would have figured it out. But you can call me every night if you have to, okay? I mean it.”

Smiling at Daisy’s insistence – having known she’ want to turn it down - Jemma nods. Fitz strokes her arm.

“Shall we all get back to bed, then?” he offers.

Jemma tenses, and it’s almost a relief when she feels Daisy and Fitz tense too, and she knows they won’t let this be the course of action they take, if they know she’s not comfortable. Though it’s taken a while to train herself into it, Jemma takes a deep breath and tries to let herself fall into the safety net they’re offering.

“I don’t want to go back to sleep,” she explains. “I – I don’t want to wake up and see _It_ again.”

“Well there’s only one thing we can do about that,” Daisy says. Fitz frowns, confused, until Daisy grabs Jemma’s hand and pulls her away, into a brief dance, and declares, “Slumber party!”

They ensure they’re all dressed to some semblance of decency – albeit pyjama-clad decency – and then sneak out, led by Daisy who somehow manages to find a balance between ‘covert spy operation’ and ‘sneaking out of college dorm’ as she leads them through familiar corridors all but devoid of people, to the lounge. Here, she and Jemma assemble a mountain-slash-nest of blankets while Fitz rummages through the kitchen in search of snacks. He emerges with a packet of pretzels and one of Red Vines, to find that Jemma is saving a place for him in the mountain-nest.

“Chick flicks,” Daisy says, “sorry, but it’s what the doctor ordered.”

“Excuse you,” Fitz scoffs and throws a pretzel at her. “Mean Girls is a masterpiece.”

Daisy nudges Jemma with her elbow.

“Keep him.”

Jemma grins smugly, and nestles back into Fitz as she pulls the blankets around them. They pass food around each other and chat and mime along with the movies, and at one point Daisy tries to play footsies with Fitz, to tease him, but he plays back and they both continue until they crack and burst out laughing.

It’s only when they don’t hear Jemma laughing along with them that they realise; somewhere in the middle of Red Vines and laughter and _Made of Honour,_ Jemma has fallen asleep after all.

Fitz smiles across at Daisy, and she grins back. She stays – it’s not a question, and even if it were, they’re all three of them thoroughly burrito-ed together by their blanket-nest at this point. They turn their attention back to the movie, though they’re so tired and they’ve missed so much that it’s no longer obvious what’s going on. Daisy’s intimate knowledge of the rom-com genre allows her to catch up quickly, and she recalls that the True Love is about to interrupt The Wedding with a Confession and in this particular iteration, he does so by hiring a horse – having never ridden one for more than a trail – and careening through the forest in an effort to catch up with the wedding party’s ferry.

“Now, see, that’s the kind of shit that happens when you –“

She glances back at Fitz to tease him – about waiting, about grand gestures, about Getting the Girl – only to find that he, too, appears to be asleep. As per usual, he’s gone about it in a somewhat less dignified manner than Jemma but still, Daisy feels her heart swell at the sight of her two best friends in the world, so soft and at ease with each other. Her love for them in that moment is so pure that she doesn’t even wish she could take a photo. Okay. Maybe for a second. But just a second.

Smiling to herself, Daisy eases the packet of pretzels from its place in the burrito-nest and eats as quietly as possible, continuing her vigil alone so that when Jemma is the first of them to wake in the morning, she knows that it is all real and that she is safe, and more loved than she knows.


End file.
